The stories within stories in Kashmir

Award-winning journalist Ipsita Chakravarty's debut book is a story about stories in Kashmir.

- NEHA KIRPAL

Award-winning journalist Ipsita Chakravarty's debut book is a story about stories in Kashmir. Ms Chakravarty, who has reported on politics and armed conflict in Kashmir and Northeast India for decades, brings out multiple Kashmiri voices—heard and unheard—through several forms of storytelling, including personal memories, urban legends, oral histories, folk theatre, songs, jokes, rumours, myths and fables. The book consists of various stories in the region—about loss, laughter, haunting and place-making.

In Kashmir, "haalaat" is the word used to describe the time after 1989. According to Ms Chakravarty, stories of the haalaat are part-fact, part-rumour, part-fever dream. By 1989, when armed rebellion spread through the state, many of these traditions had died or been forced underground. It is possibly for this reason that folktales and local narratives in the region—told and retold about the past—often begin with the word "dapaan," meaning "it is said." "It is said, two things can change at any time in Kashmir, the weather and the haalaat," she explains in the book's Introduction.